Terry Dinkins learned how Bangor voted in Maine’s statewide races on election night before he learned the outcome of the City Council race in which he was competing.
After hearing that the “blue wave” hitting much of the nation had swayed Bangor voters toward Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson, Dinkins was prepared to learn that those voters had also chosen more liberal candidates for council.
Twenty minutes later, Bangor’s results showed that Dinkins and two other candidates on the conservative end of the 12-person pool had won.
“I was kind of amazed,” Dinkins said. “We must have got a lot of Democrat votes.”
Last week’s results marked a shift from recent years in which progressive groups seemed to dominate in the city’s local elections. The disconnect between how Bangor voters approached the local election compared with statewide races shows a desire for more balance on the council and the impact of growing organizing on the right. Outsized spending on this year’s council race could also set a new precedent for Bangor’s elections.
Many voters saw the three winning candidates — Anthony Cote, Terry Dinkins and Joseph Pratt — as people who would disrupt the status quo on the council, according to Cote. He named public safety, needle litter and homelessness as issues that motivated his supporters, including some Democrats.
Voters have been unhappy with the council’s work this year.
“Last week, six days ago, you were given an edict and a direction,” resident Stephen Brough said at Monday’s council meeting after the new members were sworn in. “In nine months, when campaign season starts, we’d better see some positive results. No more needles on the streets.”
Lewiston voters seemed to move in a similar direction, approving limits on the number of needles that syringe service programs can hand out and sending the mayoral race to a runoff.
While the three winners in Bangor mostly campaigned on more conservative ideas, they focused on local issues, which could’ve helped draw voters across the political spectrum.
State Sen. Joseph Baldacci, D-Bangor, was one of those voters who wanted to see a shift in the makeup of the City Council. The state legislator and former council chair ran for Congress this year as a Democrat, but he also voted for Cote and Pratt, he said.
Baldacci said he doesn’t believe all Bangor voters marked their local ballots through a partisan lens, instead focusing on local issues and candidates who “would inject some new energy into the City Council.”
“Voters in Bangor, myself included to an extent, were tired of the bickering and the petty grievances and the insults and really wanted a City Council that focuses on the issues that they care about,” he added.
Rick Fournier, another former council chair, felt the election results were “all about balance.” Fournier said he saw both the blue wave that tipped the scales toward Democrats in the House and Senate and the council election outcome as a rejection of extremism and a desire for more balance across all levels of government.
“But it is so incredibly unique that everyone went blue except Bangor, and Bangor is an incredibly blue town,” he added. “This blue wave that occurred, to a large degree, I think that’s primarily about [President Donald] Trump.”
Fifty-eight percent of Bangor voters chose Jackson in the U.S. Senate race. In Bangor’s 12-person local race, the winning slate of conservative candidates, all of whom were endorsed by a new political action committee called Concerned Citizens of Bangor, were followed by the three progressive candidates endorsed by the labor-aligned nonprofit Food and Medicine.
There were also 7,169 blanks on the local ballot, which means the election was likely decided by some combination of liberal-leaning voters who either chose conservative candidates at the local level or left their City Council ballots blank.
Everything in the council race seemed to be bigger this year, from yard signs to fundraising totals.
“We had really good candidates that ran good campaigns,” said Philip Henry, the local real estate investor who spearheaded the Concerned Citizens of Bangor PAC that spent more than $15,000 on the race. Henry pointed to the winning slate’s many years in Bangor and their level of community involvement.
Dinkins started campaigning in the spring and encountered many residents who already knew of him because of his work running a warming shelter in his church during the winter. He thinks that background could’ve drawn more Democrats to his campaign, he said.
Dinkins raised by far the most money of any candidate, hitting nearly $15,000 as of the most recent campaign finance reporting deadline. That’s far above what anyone else has raised for a Bangor City Council campaign in the last few years.
“If I was going to run for council, I wanted to win,” Dinkins said.
It’s hard to say exactly how much of a role the PAC played in getting its preferred candidates elected, but all three incoming councilors agreed it had some kind of effect.
Cote said that while he doesn’t believe advertising swung many voters who would’ve otherwise chosen the progressive slate, he thinks the Concerned Citizens group helped consolidate a set of candidates to vote for amid a large pool.
All three of Food and Medicine’s endorsed candidates won last year, when it was the only local group that meaningfully organized around a slate of contenders, and that past success was eye-opening, Cote said, for other groups that wanted to be more competitive in the council race.
“You had to get your name out there,” he said.
Pratt said he thinks that overall, the PAC’s endorsement helped the three candidates win and aided turnout, but it also discouraged some people. He himself had mixed feelings about the PAC’s social media ads and noted that one couple who supported his petition to get on the ballot took Pratt’s sign off their lawn after his Concerned Citizens endorsement was released.
The new councilor saw that reflected in the differential among the top three candidates. At third place, Pratt was nearly 700 votes behind Cote, the first-place candidate. Pratt said he would’ve expected the results to be tighter if everyone relied just on the PAC endorsements alone.
Most of the PAC’s spending went to Facebook and Instagram ads designed by Harris Media, a conservative political marketing agency, that reached upwards of 100,000 people, according to the Meta Ad Library.
“Effective advertising does affect people,” Jack McKay, Food and Medicine’s executive director, said. “A lot of people get their news through social media.”
One of those ads called on residents to vote out “socialist Leonard,” referring to the incumbent candidate Joe Leonard who failed to win another term. Leonard declined to comment for this story.
McKay noted that his group didn’t attack any of the opposing candidates. “I think it’s good to have differences of opinion, but to do it in a respectful way,” he said.
His group spent about $300 on promoting its municipal slate this year. That total was smaller than the previous year, and the group released its endorsements on Oct. 15, a week later than last year.
McKay noted that winning the U.S. Senate race was the focus within Food and Medicine, where Jackson used to work. That prioritization meant that Democrats and progressive groups were relatively disorganized in Bangor’s council election.
“Everybody forgets about local and municipality races,” Adam Baker, the runner-up, said. “I think from the Democratic Party downwards, they have a very top-down approach.”
Andrei Yermakov, another of Food and Medicine’s endorsed candidates, said he was frustrated to see that little attention was given to municipal races among progressive organizations. Maine People’s Alliance, another progressive group, hasn’t donated to Bangor City Council candidates since 2023, according to a BDN review of past candidates’ campaign finance reports.
Yermakov added that he was shocked by the number of blanks on the City Council ballot, which told him that many voters were uninformed about the race.
One thing many Bangor residents seemed to agree on was a distaste for the attempt by Jonathan Bush, the Cape Elizabeth resident and wealthy tech entrepreneur, to influence the race with an expensive social media campaign that criticized the current council but didn’t name particular candidates.
In Fournier’s view, Bush’s ads and any spending by people other than the candidates themselves made the race more partisan.
“It shouldn’t be political. It shouldn’t be about parties. It’s about what’s best for Bangor,” he said. “If someone’s running for office locally, they should be raising their own money. There shouldn’t be outside influences coming in, spending money.”